Optical drive disappears in windows 7

[CreeDorofl]

This is a common issue, and I've googled the crap out of it. Seems like windows 7 support for many drives is not there.

I have an Acer Power FH system with a Memorex CD/DVD optical drive. Was using Windows XP and just did a clean install of 7 on a new drive.

The drive doesn't show up in my computer, or in device manager. It's also not in disk manager.

It was available in XP and shows in BIOS. It showed briefly the first time I booted into windows 7, but when I double clicked it, it disappeared. After installing some updates, it sometimes appears (either as an unknown drive or as a CD/DVD drive) but then it disappears after a few seconds. Sometimes explorer hangs when I go into my computer and it's about to disappear.

Maybe relevant: - it's a PATA drive and I'm using an adapter to connect it to one of the SATA slots on the motherboard. Dunno if it matters but it's set as a slave on channel 3, with the Windows 7 boot drive being the master on channel 3. My other drives, both PATA and SATA, are showing up ok.

---

Fixes I've googled that don't work:

· Removing upperlimit and lowerlimit registry entries at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

· Disabling driver signing verification under the windows 7 boot options

· Manually disabling via command line with bcdedit -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

· Downloading windows updates, including
Download details: Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB974332)

· Showing hidden devices in device manager, scanning for new hardware, useless windows troubleshooter.

---

Am I hosed or what? Time to buy a new drive? Maybe rearranging things so the drive is connected via IDE cable?

 

[CreeDorofl]

Someone on sevenforums.com found the fix - my mobo or windows doesn't like certain devices to mix on the same channel. I didn't think channels mattered anymore with SATA but I guess they do.

I just plugged the sata connector from my DVD drive into a different slot, and it worked fine. If it matters, the sata is set as a channel 2 slave and a non-booting sata drive is set as the ch. 2 master.

 

[CreeDorofl]

Bump. It isn't fixed. Memorex support sucks for the drive... after lots of digging I found links to firmware updates for my drive. Every link is 404. I searched google for the filenames of these drivers and found only one out of 4. That one failed to work (an error about the drive not being found).

In short, the drivers are either impossible to find or suck, and without them I can't seem to keep this drive from disappearing in windows 7. It will appear and work for a short time. I don't know what changes to make it disappear. It's gone in device manager too.

Help?

 

[Dirty Durden]

Bump. It isn't fixed. Memorex support sucks for the drive... after lots of digging I found links to firmware updates for my drive. Every link is 404. I searched google for the filenames of these drivers and found only one out of 4. That one failed to work (an error about the drive not being found).

In short, the drivers are either impossible to find or suck, and without them I can't seem to keep this drive from disappearing in windows 7. It will appear and work for a short time. I don't know what changes to make it disappear. It's gone in device manager too.

Help?

Try this, I hope this helps
1. Click on Start --> Run --> and type in 'regedit' followed by the enter key ( if Vista Start search or windows+R )
2. Expand the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" key (looks like a folder) by double clicking it (or
3. clicking the "+" next to it.)
4. Expand the "SYSTEM" Key
5. Expand the "CurrentControlSet" Key
6. Expand the "Control" Key
7. Expand the "Class" Key
8. Please look for a key containing the following string of letter and numbers:
{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
9. High light this key by left clicking once on it
10. On the right hand side you are looking for "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" under the "Name" column, once you find these please delete them by right clicking on them and choosing "delete"
11. Please exit the registry by clicking on the "X" in the top right hand corner of the screen

Reboot your computer

 

[CreeDorofl]

Durden:

You got caught not reading my whole message

From my original post:

Fixes I've googled that don't work:

· Removing upperlimit and lowerlimit registry entries at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Thanks for the 30 seconds of googling on my behalf though.

What I ended up doing to make the drive happy is to put it back on an IDE cable
as a slave to my only other IDE drive. It no longer disappears from the list of drives.
Still can't say exactly what the problem is, only that this fixed it. If it's the adapter that windows
doesn't like, I'm lucky that I don't have a third drive that needs to use it.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Memorex drives are not that compatible with a lot of win 7 setups!

 

[CreeDorofl]

From what I understand they don't even really make the drive, it's just a rebranded NEC drive. I was disappointed. They definitely seem to be an "off brand" in the world of optical drives. It works ok now, and to be fair it could be that windows 7 doesn't like my SATA adapter, since putting it on the IDE cable solved the problem.

 

[CreeDorofl]

Best answer selected by CreeDoRofl.

 

[Guest]

CreeDoRofl 02-04-2010 at 02:14:22 AM

This is a common issue, and I've googled the crap out of it. Seems like windows 7 support for many drives is not there.

I have an Acer Power FH system with a Memorex CD/DVD optical drive. Was using Windows XP and just did a clean install of 7 on a new drive.

The drive doesn't show up in my computer, or in device manager. It's also not in disk manager.

It was available in XP and shows in BIOS. It showed briefly the first time I booted into windows 7, but when I double clicked it, it disappeared. After installing some updates, it sometimes appears (either as an unknown drive or as a CD/DVD drive) but then it disappears after a few seconds. Sometimes explorer hangs when I go into my computer and it's about to disappear.

Maybe relevant: - it's a PATA drive and I'm using an adapter to connect it to one of the SATA slots on the motherboard. Dunno if it matters but it's set as a slave on channel 3, with the Windows 7 boot drive being the master on channel 3. My other drives, both PATA and SATA, are showing up ok.

---

Fixes I've googled that don't work:

· Removing upperlimit and lowerlimit registry entries at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

· Disabling driver signing verification under the windows 7 boot options

· Manually disabling via command line with bcdedit -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

· Downloading windows updates, including
Download details: Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB974332)

· Showing hidden devices in device manager, scanning for new hardware, useless windows troubleshooter.

---

Am I hosed or what? Time to buy a new drive? Maybe rearranging things so the drive is connected via IDE cable?

I have done these exact same things as you... I even went to the trouble of buying a second dvd drive only to have the same thing happen!
I have also tried moving the drive to another slot. Changing master slave settings. Flashing my bios with an update. updating the firmware for the drives.
I've noticed that the driver was the same for both of my dvd drives , a generic microsoft one from 2006, and that my firmware updates seemed to not matter a jot! Could this be a microsoft **** up that they haven't hot fixed yet? if it is it seems mighty strange as I see many many threads like this one going back a year or so!
Does anyone have any answers?

 

[keoni88]

Hello,

I also have a problem with my sata optical drive. It worked perfectly but now windows doesn't recognizes it anymore.
It is not listed in device manager anymore. It's also not listed in "my computer" anymore.
I googled several houres, but no succes.
I also tried the upperfilter/lowerfilter fix but no succes.

I'm pretty sure it has to do something with the "Dell extended battery life" stuff.
I have studio 1557 laptop and I enabled the abovementioned option. So when you run on battery power, the software changes some power settings like for example: disable power for optical drive. This worked fine for 2 days, but now, I disabled this power saving option, but my optical drive is still disabled.

Normally when you reconnect the power supply, the optical drive gets enabled again. (or if you just disable the power saving option)
So my problem is, I can't enable my optical drive anymore.

It is still detected in bios though.


Any help would be appreciated, i'm clueless.

 

[keoni88]

OK I solved it myself. Apparently it was still in the device manager but it changed names. It was listed under "IDE/ATA/ATAPI controllers" named "ATA channel 1" (in my case). I noticed that this one was disabled. (you can hardly tell the difference looking at the icon.....) and I enabled it and thathaaaa... now it's back under "DVD/CR-ROM drives" and also in "my computer".

 

[dazedlisa]

Try this, I hope this helps
1. Click on Start --> Run --> and type in 'regedit' followed by the enter key ( if Vista Start search or windows+R )
2. Expand the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" key (looks like a folder) by double clicking it (or
3. clicking the "+" next to it.)
4. Expand the "SYSTEM" Key
5. Expand the "CurrentControlSet" Key
6. Expand the "Control" Key
7. Expand the "Class" Key
8. Please look for a key containing the following string of letter and numbers:
{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
9. High light this key by left clicking once on it
10. On the right hand side you are looking for "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" under the "Name" column, once you find these please delete them by right clicking on them and choosing "delete"
11. Please exit the registry by clicking on the "X" in the top right hand corner of the screen

Reboot your computer

I got to step 10. The only thing I had in the key you mentioned was (under the name column): (Default), Class, ClassDesc, EnumPropPages32, IconPath, Installer32, NoInstallClass, and SilenInstall.

Do you have any recommendations on what I should do next?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

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